Sonny Vu
Education
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PhD (ABD), Linguistics 1996-09-01 - 2000-05-01
Beijing Normal University
, Mandarin 1999-01-01 - 1999-05-01
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
, Mathematics, Hungarian 1995-01-01 - 1995-05-01
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
, Hebrew 1993-08-01 - 1994-01-01
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
, BS in Mathematics and BA in Linguistics with Distinction 1991-09-01 - 1996-08-01Work Experience
Liminal
Current
Liminal
Biolinq
Current
Biolinq
Alabaster
Current
Alabaster
Elemental Machines
2014-10-01 - 2023-09-01
Elemental Machines
AREVO
2020-01-01 - 2023-02-01
AREVO
Impact Biosystems
2019-09-01 - 2022-10-01
Impact Biosystems
Fossil Group, Inc.
2015-12-01 - 2018-02-01
Fossil Group, Inc.
Misfit Wearables
2011-10-01 - 2015-12-01
Misfit Wearables
AgaMatrix
2001-09-01 - 2011-06-01
AgaMatrix
FireSpout
1999-11-01 - 2001-07-01
FireSpout
Skills
Summary
Chief Builder for Liminal, a Temasek-founded group in Singapore and Boston, working with and investing in unicorn and repeat founders to build their next venture. Chief Architect for Biolinq, a medtech company with breakthrough continuous multi-analyte dermal sensing tech, supporting product and commercial efforts. Investor / advisor / director of 50+ early stage companies (pre-seed to Series A) with themes in advance materials, industrial biotech, semiconductors, enterprise AI, healthtech. Previously co-founded: * Impact Biosystems (2019)- novel muscle fitness sensing devices (acquired) * Elemental Machines (2014) - hardware and analytics for lab operations (Series B) * Misfit (2011) - fashion-centric wearables and smart home devices (acquired by Fossil for $260m; served as President and CTO for Fossil Group afterward) * AgaMatrix (2001) - blood glucose monitors and digital health for diabetes (acquired by i-SENS) * FireSpout (1998) - ML / NLP for autosummarization (acquired by Ask Jeeves) Select boards: AmalgamRX - enterprise digital medicine AI (Director, 2021 - present) Cyabra - misinformation cybersecurity AI (Director, 2021 - present) Neteera - private, contact-free patient monitoring (Director, 2017 - present) Netspark - inappropriate content cybersecurity AI (Director, 2023 - present) Perfect Day - industrial biotech for animal-free dairy (Chairman, 2016 - 2019) VI - enterprise health AI (Director, 2017 - present) Raised $257m in 22 rounds (Pre-Seed to Series C) for companies I’ve founded; helped portfolio companies raise a lot more. Before startups, I worked at Microsoft Research in NLP, worked on PhD in linguistics @MIT (Noam Chomsky, Ken Hale), studied math @UIUC. Outside of work, when I’m not playing with my two kids, I’m learning new math / science / languages and wondering about things I don’t understand. Would love to hear about cool dreams of the future, so please ping me.
